My 4 Day 'mini-vacation' Was ...

... about two weeks too short.

As per usual, when I (alone) get the rare chance to escape from my loving, yet all-to-often intolerable children, I head out to relax in God's country - Mitchell, Oregon.

Here are the stats for the town.

As you can see, there is not a lot of population to get in the way of ones relaxation. There is one store, one gas station, two restaurants (that are open at different times of the day), one coffee shop, a post office and the school. That is pretty much it. If the mood strikes, you can even sit on the bench in front of the 100+ year old store and watch the cars go by. That is, if they are going by at all. Sometimes cars/trucks will stop, driver to driver, in the middle of the street and chat. Why? Be case they can. When there is no traffic and you know everyone in town, what better place - especially if the weather is not the best for standing outside.

With that information in hand, it is easy to see why one could not want to leave such a relaxing locale, only to return to the day to day 'battle of wills' that defines life with people under the age of six.

A close and dear friend of mine, to which I have never met, once had THIS to say back in a 1983 performance. Now, at the time, I thought 'How funny! Make it stop before I pee myself!' ... since then, my opinion has been altered. Oh, sure, it IS still funny, but with the sympathetic twist that comes with knowing EXACTLY what he is talking about.

As his children were loaded with 'the brain damage', I have discovered (to my horror) that mine are also - and how! They alternate between brilliance and utter bewildering stupidity without changing gears - and I'M the transmission that has to accommodate that change in direction. I must go from ...

'Hey, awesome job! High-five!'

... to ...

'What in the name of all that is Holy and right in the universe, were you thinking!? Are you completely insane!?'

... all in the same breath. Seriously.

Try taking your car: go full speed forward, then jam it in reverse, all while the gas pedal is pressed to the floor. It's kinda like that, except YOU are the transmission that must deal with the radical change in emotional directions at maximum intensity. It's the 9G roller coaster that only stops after you have passed out ... but is back on as soon as you regain some semblance of consciousness.

[sarcasm] What fun! [/sarcasm]

My children are the architects of my destruction and are consuming my sanity and intelligence at an alarming rate. I can now see why they say 'Hire a teenager while they still 'know everything'.' It is because, through proximity and osmosis and over a number of years, they now have all YOUR brain power. You are left to wonder ...

'What the hell happened? I used to be an intelligent member of society. Now, it is all I can do to complete a coherent sentence without drooling on myself.'.

As you can see by the simple formula above, the parents IQ diminishes proportionately to the number of children they have and their cumulative ages, over a period of time. Following the math, it is easy to show that the end result is a negative parent IQ, after only a decade or so of child/parent interaction.

Unless you are a super-genius, within a maximum of 16 years, you will be on par with the intelligence of cat litter, as well as having taken on it's physical attributes. You will have been pissed on and pissed off, all while taking the crap the beautiful, loving spawn of your loins pile upon you. You will stink and have had so much of your 'being' scooped out and flushed down the toilet, that you are only a fraction of the once full vessel of pine-scented goodness you were in the beginning. The beginning, before you had them lovable kids ...

So, why did I post this rambling entry and subject you to fictitious higher-math?

'I don't knoooowwwww!'

Well, that's just great ... here comes the cat ...